Comments

Kozy62

TripleD

Good news everyone, at least for me. So far this year I had not made a dime. My healthcare insurance is not subsidized due to my estimated income that I put down on the ACA enrollment. So I was starting to think that I might get my health insurance paid for this year by you. Thursday I began getting phone calls and emails about a job opportunity at a very large hospital in the Southeast. Their chief architect for a major project had left suddenly and it just so happens that I am an expert on the exact same systems they are using. Yesterday I had my phone interview and I was told to expect the contract on Monday. So if you want to blame me for your healthcare insurance/ healthcare costs going up, go ahead. I am charging them a boatload of money. I am about to go from making zero this year to making more than all of you combined. Ha Ha Ha

questioner

A good idea is to automatically enroll in health-insurance plans Americans who are eligible for premium tax credits. At first glance, 7.1 million people signing up for exchange-based coverage might suggest that auto-enrollment is a solution to a problem that no longer exists. But with more than 30 million Americans projected to lack insurance even with Obamacare, there’s more to be done.

And I don't think either party should dispute that those are good ideas. (At least not anyone who reads correctly)

questioner

You keep wanting the republicans to rewrite the health care laws, but it doesn't make sense to start over from scratch. But here are some repub ideas that have improvements to the ACA.

The first is to let nurse practitioners and other medical professionals practice to the full extent of their abilities. This makes sense because it would drive down costs.

End the exemption from taxes for health-care benefits provided by employers, an accident of history that encourages higher consumption of health care and makes it more expensive. Scrap the exclusion altogether, replacing it with a tax deduction for all health insurance.

(Right now this exemption is unfair. Americans with employer insurance get the benefit of a tax break while those who buy policies on their own do not.)

questioner

I saw my cost for health insurance go up every year by 10% or 15% for the past decade...So if anything, for the past decade I have been subsidizing your insurance.

Not sure how he can confused what I said with what he said, but using his logic and his words, what He wrote is "total BS"

"to try to blame me personally for (his) higher health insurance is total BS. Only a complete and total idiot would attempt something like that. This is a classic (liberal) tactic though. They paint a picture with an extremely limited amount of information in a order to force a false conclusion. Anyone who can look at the big picture can easily see how dishonest that is.

questioner

However, I hope you can believe that for many of us, our costs have increased.

D3 now says; I am saying that for questioner to try to blame me personally for her higher health insurance is total BS. Only a complete and total idiot would attempt something like that. This is a classic Republican tactic though.

Kozy62

Health industry officials say ObamaCare-related premiums will double in some parts of the country, countering claims recently made by the administration.

The expected rate hikes will be announced in the coming months amid an intense election year, when control of the Senate is up for grabs. The sticker shock would likely bolster the GOP’s prospects in November and hamper ObamaCare insurance enrollment efforts in 2015.

“The increases are far less significant than what they were prior to the ACA,” Sibelius said in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee.

“It’s pretty shortsighted because I think everybody knows that the way the exchange has rolled out … is going to lead to higher costs,” said one senior insurance executive who requested anonymity.

The insurance official, who hails from a populous swing state, said his company expects to triple its rates next year on the ObamaCare exchange.

Kozy62

Yes, and even here where facts concerning the ACA are branded as lies and those stating the facts are dismissed because they do not agree with the left, or even worse, called names.

Well, it's a bad law, conceived in a back room by people only interested in their political agenda & nothing more. And whether the president or Ms. Pelosi or Mr. Reid says there is nothing that can be done, we must demand it be dismantled...it's after all the American way, no matter what the left tries to tell us! Remember, the left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation — no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any & all opposition.

The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian & declares certain controversies over & visits serious consequences — from social ostracism to vocational defenestration — upon those who refuse to be silenced.

Kozy62

"Or try objecting to the new so-called Paycheck Fairness Act for women, which is little more than a full-employment act for trial lawyers. Sex discrimination is already illegal. What these new laws do is relieve the plaintiffs of proving intentional discrimination. To bring suit, they need only to show that women make less in that workplace .

Like the White House, where women make 88 cents to the men’s dollar?

The good news is that the “war on women” charge is mostly cynicism, fodder for campaign-year demagoguery. But the trend is growing. Oppose the current consensus and you’re a denier, a bigot, a homophobe, a sexist, an enemy of the people.

Long a staple of academia, the totalitarian impulse is spreading. What to do? Defend the dissenters, even if — perhaps, especially if — you disagree with their policy. It is — it was? — the American way."

Kozy62

"To this magic circle of forced conformity, the left would like to add certain other policies, resistance to which is deemed a “war on women.” It’s a colorful synonym for sexism. Leveling the charge is a crude way to cut off debate.

Thus, to oppose late-term abortion is to make war on women’s “reproductive health.” Similarly, to question Obamacare’s mandate of free contraception for all."

Some oppose the regulation because of its impingement on the free exercise of religion. Others on the simpler (nontheological) grounds of a skewed hierarchy of values. Under the new law, everything is covered, but a few choice things are given away free. To what does contraception owe its exalted status? Why should it rank above, say, antibiotics for a sick child, for which that same mother must co-pay?

Say that, however, and you are accused of denying women “access to contraception.”

Kozy62

"The left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation — no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition.

The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences — from social ostracism to vocational defenestration — upon those who refuse to be silenced.

Sometimes the word comes from on high, as when the president of the United States declares the science of global warming to be “settled.” Anyone who disagrees is then branded “anti-science.” And better still, a “denier” — a brilliantly chosen calumny meant to impute to the climate skeptic the opprobrium normally reserved for the hatemongers and crackpots who deny the Holocaust."

Kozy62

After nearly 5 hours on the phone waiting to speak with someone, I’m convinced that an Obamacare specialist is like Bigfoot or Norm’s wife on “Cheers.” I’ve heard the tale, but there’s no proof they actually exist.

Ultimately, on my umpteenth try, three days into the process, I was finally able to get into the Healthcare.gov site, wade through several pages & cancel my plan — although, unlike with most insurance plans, I couldn’t get a prorated refund on the days I had paid for but wouldn’t need. One last $100 slap in the face.

It was difficult to sign up for Obamacare, but nowhere near as hard as it was to leave the program. That raises a serious question: Was Obamacare designed to inflate its numbers by holding enrollees hostage in the program once they signed up? From my experience, that certainly seems to be the case.

TripleD

No, I am saying that for questioner to try to blame me personally for her higher health insurance is total BS. Only a complete and total idiot would attempt something like that. This is a classic Republican tactic though. They paint a picture with an extremely limited amount of information in a order to force a false conclusion. Anyone who can look at the big picture can easily see how dishonest that is. I did not miss anything. There was nothing said that was worth reading. I can scan the text and decide not to read the BS.

questioner

I've given up on TripleD. When he couldn't even admit that while his costs are lower with ACA, some of us have higher costs as a result of it, or that insurance companies charged him higher rates because of being a diabetic (just like they do for women of childbearing age), well....

Those two things are just unemotional facts, unable to be disputed, and yet he still did. So I give up.

So far I haven't said "I told you so"--like about when Obama raised federal minimum wages that the rest of us will end up being affected. Or that Crimea would have a negative affect on us. But when insurance rates go up I may make a lawn sign that says "I told you so" and stick in D3's lawn.

questioner

When the next round of premium increases hits over the summer, and the market for employer-provided health insurance undergoes the same kind of massive disruption as the individual market did over the last six months, the debate over the honesty and integrity of the Obama administration may hit new levels of intensity.

questioner

incoming enrollees require more medical attention than the previous risk pools, not less – which means that insurers will need to raise premiums even more than first thought.

Their new study shows, for instance, that the enrollees from state and federal exchanges have a 47 percent higher use of specialty medications than in commercial plans in general.

The medications themselves show that the care costs will increase relative to the existing risk pools as well. The rate for HIV medications in Obamacare exchange plans is four times higher than in existing commercial plans. Medication prescriptions are 35 percent higher...

As Express Scripts, which studied changes in pharmacy benefits concludes that the ACA has succeeded in getting coverage to consumers who need it. However, that comes at a high cost for those who had their existing coverage canceled and saw their premiums and deductibles skyrocket as a result of Obamacare.

questioner

While the White House can claim credit for a net increase of 9.3 million insured and a lowered uninsured rate from 20.5 percent to 15.8 percent, the data provides a significantly different picture than that painted by President Obama and the ACA’s advocates.

First, a significant amount of this increase comes from Medicaid enrollments, not private insurance. Almost six million people enrolled in Medicaid, and earlier studies showed that a relatively small number of those came from the expansion built into the ACA; most of these would have been Medicaid-eligible prior to the reform.

Moreover, those who did enroll through the state exchanges didn’t provide the demographic lift and risk-pool support needed to prevent massive increases in either premiums or deductibles, or both, in the near future. Pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts, which collected more data from insurers than HHS managed through its own exchanges, determined that the incoming enrollees require more medical

questioner

the systems designed by HHS still cannot determine basic and critical information about enrollments such as whether a premium payment has been made. Without a premium payment, a sign-up in the web portal does not mean coverage has been extended.

Furthermore, the systems were not designed to collect important demographic information such as pre-existing coverage, current health status, or even definite age ranges, even though the success of the Obamacare structure depends on getting previously uninsured healthy Americans locked into expensive comprehensive insurance.

questioner

TripleD, no one is going to control what high level CEOs make, what pro athletes make, what college coaches make, what actors (mostly democrats) make.

Are there college profs who resent what coaches make?--I'm sure. Are there gofers on movie sets who feel that way about actors?--I'm sure.

But that isn't going to change and whining about it won't do any good.

For small businesses, I can tell you there were times our employees got paid, but we didn't cash our checks--and they aren't big ones. I can say when we started out, we didn't have healthcare, because we couldn't afford it. That is much more the case for a lot of small businesses.